My Back Pages

4 Cherry Lane

We packed it all up a few weeks ago: ancient tubes of Silver City Pink lipstick, Grandaddy's Vietnam-era MREs, endless High School photo collages, a rendering of a smiling tooth under a rainbow that won me $50 from a local dentist, and many more mementos of 37 years on Cherry Lane.

Patrick was impressed with the poster...and the prize.

There was a box for every year of school for each of us kids and from the mountain of debris some treasures emerged. Hundreds of carefully folded notes from middle school that would put a modern-day texting, tweeting, and facebooking teenager to shame. Hand-made brochures for Melissa's many Save-the-Dolphins campaigns. Cards from my grandmothers and all the people who wished me well on my 21st birthday. My one trophy: the coaches' award for volleyball (where are your other trophies? Donald the All-American asked). My handmade hieroglyph dictionary and binder with carefully preserved New York Times clippings of archaeology discoveries from the late 1980s confirmed not only the yawning depths of my teenage nerdiness but also the inevitability of my future career.

Awkward Family Portraits: My poor grandparents had this over their fireplace mantle for years.

What I really carry with me doesn't fit in a box: memories of thirty-odd Christmas mornings, whose tradition and excitement I relished; coming home to popcorn and hot chocolate after a long day of sledding ( I still want popcorn every time it snows); making homemade playdoh in the old kitchen; our 'secret hideout' on the lane; waking up early to eat cereal and devour Nancy Drew books; endless battles for the prime TV-watching location, the "light spot;" dancing Melissa around her room to Van Morrison; walking out of my bedroom in the morning to encounter Jen wearing exactly the same outfit as me (we did this when we worked together at NGS too); Grammy Grant's annual spring visit, which always coincided with azaleas and lilacs blooming;  the excitement of the Memorial Day parade and the promise of summer that came with it; the clicking sound of ten-speeds, and later car wheels, turning into the driveway to collect me for an afternoon's adventure; endless walks around the beach, and perfect summer afternoons at Rocky Point.

A bulletin board from High School

 Donald and I find ourselves in a position to be collecting mementos ourselves now. I treasure the worksheets and paper-towel tube binoculars that come home every day, amazed that I helped create a person who made this beautiful, precious thing. I'm sure that someday Patrick and Madeline will be chuckling over the empty jar I saved because it held Patrick's first bite of baby food, and the tissue paper flower that Madeline so proudly presented to me on Valentines Day. How I wish I could pop back to each of these moments sometimes and nuzzle Patrick's little baby neck, and look forever at Madeline's shining, proud smile. They will of course select their own precious memories of home, but, at least for now, they draw from a world that Donald and I are creating. I really hope they remember the homemade playdoh we made last week. It certainly brought back fond memories for me of the old kitchen at Cherry Lane, and childhood, and home.

Homemade playdoh. I loved it. I hope they do too.